Taulia: A B2B Brand with a Strategic Approach to Video Marketing

Not only is Taulia making entertaining videos (how many B2B brands can make you laugh?), but the strategy behind its video marketing is impressive.

The moment you look at a brand video from Taulia, a cloud-based supplier and financing provider, you instinctively know this is a company to watch. Not only is Taulia making entertaining videos (how many B2B brands can make you laugh?), but the strategy behind its video marketing is impressive. In fact, the brand has influenced more than $125M in marketing pipeline based on lead interactions with video content.

So, what is Taulia doing differently?

While many companies approach video with the implicit aim to “go viral” and collect as many views as possible, Taulia is not interested in appealing to the masses or tallying up a massive view count. Instead, this brand takes on an approach known as narrowcasting. In other words, Taulia creates videos to appeal directly to its niche audience and target buyer personas. It's a great approach for generating marketing qualified leads, and something marketers with stars in their eyes should pay more attention to when it comes to purposeful video that drives real marketing pipeline.

The idea behind narrowcasting

Although the viral success of megabrands on YouTube is tempting to try and emulate (who doesn't dream of an overnight smash hit?), it's not easy for a B2B marketer to make its services as sexy or appealing as a B2C company can. In fact, it can be downright discouraging for B2B video marketers if you believe a view count is all that matters.

But, happily, a high view count isn't the goal for your organization. Your videos should aim to attract and maintain the interest of qualified leads that follow through with your call to action.

Brands like Red Bull can make videos that millions of people are sure to watch because almost anyone can be part of its target market. If you can consume an energy drink and are between the ages of 18 to 34, Red Bull is trying to market to you with “branded entertainment” featuring extreme sports stars.

On the other hand, with software and hardware on the B2B scene, it's important to remember that your offering, target market, and priorities are a lot different than those of Red Bull. Your service or products won't necessarily appeal to the masses—and even if your video does go viral based on an attempt to mimic B2C marketing, it will be burdened by a ton of unqualified viewers. In other words, you might get a million people to watch a really amazing B2B video, but in that audience are going to be a ton of randoms who don't have the interest, budget, or internal structure suited to your solution.

How do you narrowcast?

As an example, let's return to Taulia.

As a pay-to-procure financing company, not everyone has a need for Taulia's services, but its marketers have found a way to entertain their identified target with funny videos based on scenarios and language their niche audience will identify with and appreciate.

Take a look at this video for Taulia's eInvoicing service. (It's a spoof of the DirecTV award-winning spot “Get Rid of Cable”):

While the video concept is broadly appealing because of the humor, it's also very clear that the entire thing was designed with Taulia's ideal customer in mind. Overall, by making videos to appeal directly to qualified viewers, Taulia influences leads that are more likely to convert.

The benefits of this approach

It's one thing to design videos to appeal to your niche audience, and another thing entirely to understand if you've actually reached this audience. That's why Taulia tracks who's watching its content with a video marketing platform. Collecting detailed video data for each of its video assets (including who's watching the content, and each individual's attention span), Taulia feed that data into its marketing automation platform (Marketo), and can therefore better understand each viewer's purchasing intent.

For example, if Taulia notices that 78% of the audience watches the eInvoicing spoof all the way through to the final CTA, it's clear the brand has captured and maintained the interest of its target as intended. This percentage of the audience didn't bounce despite the highly-targeted content, so these viewers are now new marketing qualified leads Taulia should follow up with.

Additionally, because each individual lead's video viewing history is accounted for in Marketo, Taulia can score leads based on how much video content they have consumed. Essentially, those who watch more highly targeted content in a short timeframe get a higher score. By using its marketing automation system to qualify leads in this way, Taulia has made the process for discovering and following up with MQLs much more efficient and effective.

Overall, Taulia's highly targeted content encourages randoms to bounce quickly, leaving the company with prospects who are truly interested in the brand's offering. By tracking the digital behavior of the leads interacting with its videos (as well as the exact content that piques their interest), Taulia gains incredible sales context and can truly justify its investment in video marketing because of proven ROI.